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Site Restoration

#12671 Professional Subscriber: Cannot restore site

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Friday, 15 June 2012 09:17 CDT

user57372
Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes
Have I searched the tickets before posting? yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? Yes, the ones about troubleshooting
Joomla! version: (2.5.4)
PHP version: (unknown)
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: (optional, but it helps us help you) Rochen
Akeeba Backup version which took the backup: 3.4.3
Kickstart version used to extract the backup: 3.5.1

Description of my issue: Getting Ajax error. Have tried localhost, 127.0.0.1 and both mysql types. Getting error(NotAcceptable).

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
OK, I will have to make an educated guess: you get that error when you are trying to restore your site's database. I will tell you what the problem is, why it's not resolved and how to work around it.

This is a conflict with Rochen's server setup. They are using mod_security2 with very strict settings on their server. It is supposed to block suspicious requests. However the very strict settings they use also block requests containing complex database passwords, i.e. passwords which contain non-alphanumeric characters like an exclamation mark, at-sign, hash, dollar, percent sign, caret, ampersand and so on.

I have already discussed that with Rochen, a little over two years ago. We have tried to work out a solution, but it was impossible. They insisted that allowing such complex database passwords would result in security degradation for their servers.

And here's the workaround. Log into your site's cPanel (http://www.example.com:2083, where www.example.com is to be substituted with your site's domain name) and click on MySQL Databases. Find the database user in use and change its password. Create a password which is 8 to 14 characters long but only consists of lowercase letter, uppercase letters and numbers (a-z, A-Z and 0-9). Use this new password when restoring your site and the restoration will go through.

AFAIK this issue affects all scripts which need the database password, including Joomla!'s and WordPress' own web-based installation scripts. Since Akeeba Backup Installer (the site restoration script) works just like Joomla!'s web-based installer it is affected by the same security setting as all of the other scripts.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user57372
Thanks, that took care of it. I have had similar difficulty using YooTheme's widgetkit on Rochen. Appreciate the quick response.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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